Joy
Joy is the name of a series of psychoactive drugs used by the residents of Wellington Wells in order to forget bad memories and stay happy. Joy, as a psychoactive drug, induces happiness and euphoria and makes the user perceive the world in a much more "Much happier and enjoyable " way. The side effects of Joy include varying degrees of psychosis and a lack of competence in performing complicated tasks. Characters under the influence of Joy refer to anyone not using the drug as Downers. Such characters are treated with disdain and contempt. It also goes against social acceptability (and the law) of Wellington Wells for characters to be off their Joy as they are immediately targeted and arrested by the Bobbies if discovered and are typically force-fed Joy by Joy Doctors. Those who cannot take the drug, are often tortured, beaten and possibly killed. It was created by Harry Haworth in the year 1953. Appearance Joy is typically consumed in the form of a pill, in the shape of an edible small capsule. Each capsule is color-coded depending on the 'flavour' (chemical composition) of the Pill itself. Strawberry flavoured Joy is light/dark pink in color, Vanilla is a clear white, Chocolate is a lighter/darker tone of brown, and Blackberry is light- and dark purple. In addition to the pill form, Joy is also available in a liquid and gaseous form. All water sources and foodstuffs in Hamlyn Village are laced with liquid Joy while Jubilators and aerosol spray machines disperse out gaseous Joy all over the city. Effects The primary purpose of Joy is to induce happiness, pleasure and to repress bad memories. When taken, Joy causes a high that elevates the user's mood by inducing a strong sensation of euphoria and a chemically induced state of happiness. Joy also induces amnesia, both retrograde and anterograde, preventing Wellies from remembering the "Very Bad Thing" (and consequentially most of their other unpleasant past and present memories). It is suggested in-game that Joy makes one's pupils "teeny-tiny" which implies that the drug has opiate-like effects while the Memory Loss effects may indicate the presence of benzodiazepines and dissociatives. Joy might be a single pharmaceutical chemical or a polydrug, a combination of several different drugs and it is likely that each 'flavour' of Joy is a different chemical compound, as Wastrels can have particularly negative reactions to one 'flavour' of Joy in particular. When one takes Joy, it causes the user to perceive the world in a much "happier perspective", as in, it makes everything appear more colorful and vibrant and causes otherwise unpleasant sounds to be funny and/or appealing, keeping the user in a much better mood than they would otherwise be in. As an example, if the player takes Joy, the sky will appear bright blue with a lovely double rainbow visible. Overdose If one overdoses on Joy, the psychoactive effects of the drug are amplified, causing the user's worldview to become even more distorted, making them happy to the point of ecstasy and also causes them to develop so severe an amnesia they cannot carry out most basic everyday tasks. In-game, if the player overdoses on Joy, the sky will be full of rainbows and flower motifs while the world will become almost cartoonishly colorful and vibrant, bordering on the comical. The player will also be completely unable to craft anything or carry out any interaction(s). Side Effects Though many users of Joy claims that it's never too dangerous to use too much Joy, it's often quickly proven that the claim is false. Since Joy induces amnesia, it can cause noticeable difficulty in performing everyday tasks due to it causing the user to forget important knowledge such as where they live or what they were just supposed to be doing. If one overdoses on Joy, the memory loss can become severe enough to render the user completely non-functional, making them forget how to do even simple everyday tasks, rendering them incapacitated. Memory Loss When entering a Memory Loss episode, all light will be in a bright red hue while the shadows are strikingly dark. The sky will be brown with thin, red tendrils contorting above. People's eyes will glow a bright red and their voices will be distorted, the player will draw double suspicion from Wellies. While it doesn't last very long and resets to 0% as soon as it's over with, it is still not an ideal situation to be put in off guard. Withdrawal While Joy causes a high that makes the user happy, once the effect wears off and the high dissipates, the user will suffer from strong withdrawal symptoms, making them sad, depressed and perceive everything in a much more darker and unpleasant way. Joy withdrawal makes the user see everything as colorless, dark, dreary and gloomy while all sounds become distorted and begin to sound menacing, frightening and threatening. There have been cases where the withdrawal symptoms have become severe enough for the user to commit suicide. The withdrawal symptoms will wear off over time, although the length of time required varies depending on how high the Joy dose was. As the user takes more and more Joy, the chemicals in it begin to accumulate in their system, making them more receptive and sensitive to Joy, amplifying the effects of the drug. This, however, also has the unpleasant side-effect of causing the user to gradually develop an addiction to Joy, which makes the withdrawal symptoms worse. Other Effects "Bad batches" of defective Joy (Joy that has been improperly manufactured) have been known to cause users to become very groggy and erratic and induce severe changes to the user's chemistry, preventing them from ever taking the same type of Joy ever again. In the event that they do take that type of Joy again, the user suffers paranoid delusions, vomiting, seizures, and in severe cases, death. At other times, it causes the user to become resistant to Joy, or even completely immune to it, diminishing or even completely eliminating its normal effects. People who are unable to take Joy are referred to as Wastrels. History In 1943, during World War II, Germany successfully invaded and occupied England. Shortly after, the Germans forced the city of Wellington Wells to commit the "Very Bad Thing", by forcing them to hand over all of their children under age 13 to be sent to Germany. Joy was created after the citizens of Wellington Wells could no longer bear the anguish and guilt from having been forced to do the "Very Bad Thing" during the Occupation and wanted to forget the whole thing and be happy again. According to Wellington Wells' Archive, production of Joy began in 1953 and eventually, the entirety of Wellington Wells became more or less completely addicted to the drug, with the population keeping themselves in a permanent Joy high, lest they go into withdrawal and remember all of the bad and sad things from the past (or present). This extreme demand for Joy forced Haworth Labs to ramp up the production of the drug which only served to exacerbate the Wellies' addiction to the drug, raising the demand even higher, forcing Haworth Labs to increase production again, further worsening the addition. As a result of this vicious cycle, the increased Joy consumption soon began to have highly deleterious effects on Wellington Wells. Due to Joy-induced memory loss gradually eroding people's ability to work, this ultimately led to the collapse of the city's food production and the gradual deterioration of the city's power supply system, both of which begun to cause further damage in the form of an ever-worsening food shortage, an increasing number of blackouts and power shortages due to the deteriorating power grid and after some time, all trade with the outside world stopped as well, due to the citizens of Wellington Wells being too severely affected by Joy to be able to manufacture anything for export. As the situation began to worsen, the government of Wellington Wells, too drugged-up to be able to think rationally, decided that it would be better to have everyone forget about everything bad and stay happy, with any objections being suppressed with Joy, and thus the production of the drug was increased ever higher still. However, this extreme production quota meant that Haworth Labs would end up exhausting all of the available raw materials needed for the production of Joy by the mid-1960s and this meant facing a potential drug shortage in the future. To address the problem, Haworth Labs decided to start producing Joy using substitute materials sourced from the city itself. This turned out to be a gross mistake as the substitute Joy did not produce any of the desired effects and would oftentimes cause anyone using it to become resistant or even completely immune to the drug, preventing them from ever taking it again. Despite the substitute Joy being a failure, Haworth Labs decided to begin producing it anyway, in order to prevent Wellington Wells from running out of Joy. With the substitute Joy being produced alongside and often mixed in amongst the real Joy, the general quality of the drug begun to deteriorate, resulting in the occasional creation a "bad batches" containing defective substitute Joy which rendered those taking it unable to take more Joy, turning them into Wastrels. In time, the Wastrel population of the Garden District begun to rise at an alarming pace. By 1964, the quality of Joy is in rapid decline as the defective substitute Joy is making up an ever-larger percentage of the total Joy production and this is causing more and more people to become unable to take Joy and end up chased out of Hamlyn Village into the Garden District. While this is happening, Haworth Labs has begun dumping out the defective batches of Joy as chemical waste straight into the seawater, contaminating it, which has led to the creation of a Histoplasma Mushrooms, which are mushrooms that have been mutated by the contaminated water and have caused the outbreak of an incurable rabies-like plague that ravages the Garden District and is spreads fast. At the same time, the food shortage is now rapidly approaching famine levels, which along with the deteriorating power grid and the plague outbreak means that Wellington Wells is now teetering on the brink of total collapse, yet the heavy Joy usage prevents most Wellies from realizing this and anyone who actually does realize the terrible reality of the situation and tries to tell the truth to anyone is either taken for a Wastrel and ends up either getting chased out into the Garden District by Bobbies, shot full of Joy by a Joy Doctor and thus forgetting everything or being murdered by the Wellies who do not want to become unhappy. Flavors There are three different main flavors of Joy: Chocolate, Vanilla, and Strawberry. In addition to this, there is a new flavor called Coconut that is being developed by Anton Verloc. It should be noted that while there are different flavours, they are not given freely by choice and most of the citizen will often only use one flavour of the given Joy Pills. It can also be assumed that they don't taste like what the're named, given by Arthur's quote "I used to love chocolate ... but what did it taste like?" In addition to those three, there exists also a fourth flavor of Joy that is known as Blackberry Joy, which is stronger than regular Joy but does not induce amnesia. Being stronger than regular Joy, Blackberry likewise has much more severe withdrawal symptoms as people who go off Blackberry Joy become violent and hostile to everything and everyone around them. This is shown at the start of Act Two when Spud Murphy breaks into Sally's house, knocks her unconscious and trashes her house in a desperate search for Blackberry. It should also be noted that each "flavour" has a different chemical compound, which means that if a person were to get a bad reaction from taking the Vanilla flavour they could switch to Chocolate to be happy again. This is evident from a random wastrellette who will sometimes ask herself why she took the Vanilla when she knows it doesn't work for her. If you ever take Joy from a Mood Booth, you do not have a choice of which flavor to take; the character will always take the strawberry flavour. List Of Flavors (Extrapolated from the "How To Be Happy" Guide): # Rainbow: A full-bodied bouquet of aromas. Reminiscent of a meadow after a warm rain. Suitable for all ages. # Strawberry: Has the fruity aroma of fresh strawberries, with a slight tang on the tongue. Great for fruit-lovers and melancholics. # Chocolate: The delectable, rich flavor of chocolate, and the euphoria of Joy. The best of both worlds all wrapped up into one delicious brown pill. # Vanilla:' '''Wondrous Joy, Creamy Vanilla, imagine the possibilities and happiness that could be in your life with vanilla flavoured Joy! # 'Blackberry: A special version of Joy that is used by constables, doctors and government officials. Blackberry Joy will remove unhappiness while allowing public officials to keep a clear head. # '''Coconut: To the surprise of many, coconuts are not native to Great Britain. However, Haworth Labs is hoping to create a synthetic version of this tropical treat. Ideal for those Wellies who are nostalgic for the hotter climates of the empire. # "Tea": Haworth Labs was originally tasked with creating a tea-flavoured Joy pill, but experienced serious difficulty in getting it to work. Happily, the Executive Committee devised the brilliant solution to put liquid Joy in the municipal water supply. That way, whenever one brews a pot of tea, they can enjoy both the medicinal effects of Joy as well a hot beverage. # Sunshine: Essentially a "counterfeit" version of Joy that makes the user appear to all others as if they were high on Joy without actually making them be it and thus it doesn't have any of the drug's effect. Only a rotten downer would ever need something like that. # Oblivion:''' '''A miraculous and hard to come by little black pill. As we all know, sadly, no flavor of Joy can erase all memories. Oblivion was intended to be the exception. Gameplay Joy Pills can be found and taken by the player in all three acts, which help them to lower suspicion by not activating Downer Detectors and making Doctors passive. Joy Pills can be found in Joy dispensers at "Mood booths" located all around Hamlyn Village, as well as found randomly in buildings or looted from Wellies' bodies. There's rarely any time during gameplay that the player is required to take Joy in order to accomplish specific tasks or in order to play through tougher areas. When playing as Arthur, the first one he takes is when he rehabilitates himself from the Garden District in order to be allowed entry into Hamlyn Village and the player is in turn taught how Joy works. The second time is when Arthur is forcefully injected with a test version of Coconut Joy towards the end of the game. Gallery New Strawberry Joy Advertisement 1.jpg|An advertisement for the Strawberry flavored Joy. New Strawberry Joy Advertisement 2.png|Another Strawberry Joy advertisement. JoyPillItem.PNG|The Strawberry Joy pill seen in game Limit Joy to ONCE per Hour! Poster.png|"Limit Joy to ONCE per hour!" poster. Trivia *In the early-access builds, if the player took enough Joy to completely fill up the Joy meter, "everything would be fine and they wouldn't be a Downer anymore", triggering a game over. *If the player takes Joy at the very beginning of the game, then any of the events in the story will never take place and the game will end right there, with Arthur Hastings continuing his life as usual on Joy and the screen switches over to the credits. *Ollie Starkey suspects (according to one of his notes) that Joy only makes a few of the bad memories go away and pretend to forget everything else and try not to think about what they did. There are also actions from certain characters on Joy that suggest that they haven't completely forgotten what they did during WWII. *As evidenced by dialogue heard in the military camp on Ravensholm, boiling water will cause Joy to break down, which might explain why Haworth Labs was unable to create a Tea-flavoured Joy pill. *Joy was taken by all members of the city at one point (including Wastrels, Downers, and deceased) and it is in many ways the thing that makes Wellington Wells unique. *When Joy was first announced and released to the public in 1953, taking the drug was optional and thus, Happiness truly was a choice. *At several points in the campaign, it is hinted at that Joy may be an advanced version of a drug used by the Germans that occupied Wellington Wells. (Some of the letters in thee rooms off the passage to the White Constable's office in Haworth Labs mention this.) This could be a reference to "Pervitin" (Methamphetamine) used by the German army during WWII in order to increase performance, concentration, and self-esteem of the soldiers as well as to lower feelings of anxiety. *Joy used to be produced by Haworth Pharmaceutical in earlier builds of the game, this was before it was renamed to Haworth Labs. *It is possible that Joy took inspiration from the drug of the same name found in LISA: The Painful RPG, a game made by Dingaling Productions. Though this could also have been a coincidence. *It is hinted in one of Sally Boyle's memories, titled "Rue", that Joy is a form of birth control. *According to Anton Verloc, the ingredients used when synthesizing Joy is "bleach, whiskey and saltpeter." **Although, Verloc mentions this "recipe" while trying to dismiss Arthur, and thus this can be interpreted as a "get-out-of-this-place" joke. *When the player is on Joy, the music heard throughout the world will be at its regular pace rather than slowed down, the Bobby Whistle will sound like a party horn and the jingle that comes from Jubilators will sound complete and melodic. *When attacking a bobby while on Joy, there is a chance he will moan in pleasure rather than laugh. Category:Content Category:Items Category:Drugs